 | |
| Abbreviation | Post-nominal letters O.S.B. |
|---|---|
| Nickname | EBC |
| Formation | 1216 |
| Type | Benedictines |
| Headquarters | England |
Region served | Australia,Ireland,Peru,Sweden,UK,United States,Zimbabwe |
| Members | 19 monastic communities; 268 monks and nuns (2022 figures) |
Abbot President | Christopher Jamison |
Parent organization | Roman Catholic Church;Order of St Benedict;Benedictine Confederation |
| Website | www |
TheEnglish Benedictine Congregation (EBC) is a congregation of autonomousabbatial andprioral monastic communities ofCatholicBenedictinemonks,nuns, andlay oblates. It is technically the oldest of the nineteen congregations affiliated to theBenedictine Confederation.
The English Benedictine Congregation was erected by theHoly See in 1216 as a means of uniting the great ancient English Benedictine abbeys under a common framework and held its first General Chapter inOxford in 1218.[1] The roots of English Benedictine monasticism, however, go back much further and can be dated to the arrival ofAugustine of Canterbury and the communities established byWilfrid andBenedict Biscop in the 6th and 7th centuries. As such, the Benedictines are the oldest surviving religious order in the British Isles, were crucial in the conversion of the people to Christianity, and have strongly affected the character of English Christianity, even its Protestant forms.
From 1534-1540, all of the congregation's houses were violently suppressed duringHenry VIII'sDissolution. The congregation as it exists today is the result ofPope Paul V's 1619 unification of two groups of English Benedictines, a group of continental houses for exiles founded in the early 17th century and a group of about 8 monks who had been aggregated in 1607 to the ancient English Congregation by DomSigebert Buckley, the last surviving monk ofWestminster Abbey.
The pre-dissolution communities of England were the product of the 10th-centuryEnglish Benedictine Reform ofDunstan and the monastic principles laid down in theRegularis Concordia.[2] They could claim a material continuity with the first English Benedictine communities founded byAugustine and his companions in theGregorian mission of the 6th century; and the many great Anglo Saxon Benedictine saints and foundations such asEthelreda andSexburga ofEly Abbey,Erkenwald ofChertsey Abbey,Ethelburga ofBarking Abbey, andMildred ofMinster in Thanet Priory. The congregation also claimed a moral continuity withBenedict Biscop,Wilfrid,Bede, and their communities in spite of the material link being broken by the Viking invasions.
The 13th-century congregation and the ancient traditions of English Benedictine life completely ceased to exist at thedissolution of the monasteries under KingHenry VIII 1535–1540. Like all the professed monastic, canonical, and mendicant religious at the time of the Henrician dissolution, English Benedictine priests or scholars were assumed into the reformedsecular clergy of theChurch of England if they assented to the Supremacy. Other priests, lay brethren, and nuns of the congregation were pensioned off if aged, sought lay employment or marriage accepting effective laicisation, were left to vagrancy, or went into exile in the Abbeys of continental Europe if they wished to maintain conventual observances, or lived as covert eremites in England. A relative few were martyred, with some monks tortured to death by beingHanged, drawn and quartered, some in such provocative locations as their own Abbeys and associated holy sites, or in the place where common criminals were executed on their abbatial estates. These included three beatified abbots and the brethren of their communities who died with them; the lastAbbot of GlastonburyRichard Whiting, executed onThe Tor with fellow Glastonbury monks John Thorne, and Roger James; the lastAbbot of ReadingHugh Faringdon, executed in the inner courtyard of his Abbey with fellow Reading monksJohn Eynon, and John Rugg; and the lastAbbot of ColchesterJohn Beche, executed in a common hanging place on his monastic lands.[2]
Mary I briefly restoredWestminster Abbey to 14 English Benedictine monks, professed either in pre-dissolution or continental houses, under AbbotJohn Feckenham ofEvesham Abbey on the feast of thePresentation of Mary (21 November) in 1556, and they admitted a small number of new brethren to profession. This very modest revival was again suppressed on 12 July 1560 under theElizabethan Religious Settlement.[3]
During the reigns ofElizabeth I andJames I, English exiles with monastic vocations joined houses of theCassinese Congregation in France, Spain, and Italy. The present congregation was established by English Catholic expatriates in France and the Low Countries at the start of the 17th century and encouraged by the Holy See.[2]
As more rampant persecution emerged in reprisal to the 1605 Gunpowder Plot, the last of the Westminster monks professed under Abbot Feckenham, the aged DomSigebert Buckley O.S.B, feared the congregation would die with him. He "aggregated" Doms Robert Sadler and Edward Mayhew O.S.B, two English monks, priests, and missionaries of theAbbey of Santa Giustina, Padua, and four other lay brothers and oblates to the near-extinct Chapter of Westminster (and thereby the English Benedictine Congregation) on 21 November 1607. The Deed of Aggregation was an unofficial, clandestine affair, treasonable under English law and without prior papal consent, with only Buckley, Sadler, and Mayhew personally present. The Deed was later ratified byPope Paul V in thepapal briefCum Sicut Accepimus (24 December 1612).[4]
In 1619 the 4 extant male Priories of exiled English-speaking monks (Douai English priory, forerunner to theDownside,Ealing, andWorth communities; Dieulouard English Priory, forerunner to theAmpleforth community; St Edmunds Priory Paris, forerunner to theDouai community; and the extinct Priory of Saint-Malo) were united by another brief of Paul V,Ex Incumbenti. The documents issued in Paul's papacy were further ratified by a bull issued 12 July 1633 byPope Urban VIII, titledPlantata.[5]
The EBC's claim of continuity thus depends entirely on the 1607 Deed of Aggregation and thebriefs of 1612 and 1619, not on any direct line of continuity with regular conventual English Benedictine life prior to the Dissolution. The present congregation owes its original spiritual identity primarily to the Spanish Cassinese communities its monks were formed in, the dangerous situation of persecution, the need for priestly and catechetical workers in the English mission, and the general climate of Tridentine monastic reform.[2]
In 1598 LadyMary Percy O.S.B established the first religious community for English exiles under the Rule of St Benedict for nuns atBrussels, from which sprang a number of daughter houses, which together with the mother house returned to England during theFrench Revolution. These communities were the Brussels mother house, laterEast Bergholt Abbey; theGhent community, laterOulton Abbey, founded 1624; theDunkirk community, laterTeignmouth Abbey, founded 1662; and theYpres community,Kylemore Abbey, founded 1665.[6] The Abbeys of the Percy tradition remained unaffiliated from any Benedictine congregation including the EBC until Kylemore aggregated in 2020. But Dames from the Brussels and Ghent were involved of the 1623 EBC convent atCambrai.
In 1607 a Priory dedicated toSt Gregory the Great, the first monastic community for exiled English Benedictine monks (ancestor ofDownside Abbey and its daughter housesEaling Abbey andWorth Abbey), was established atDouai inFlanders byJohn Roberts and other English monks from Spanish monasteries, particularly theRoyal Abbey of San Benito, Valladolid.[7] In 1608 another community (ancestor ofAmpleforth Abbey) was established in the disusedcollegiate church ofDieulouard, dedicated toSt Laurence of Rome, in theDuchy of Lorraine (modernFrance). Two further houses in theKingdom of France followed, the first in 1611 atSaint-Malo inBrittany, and the second in 1615 inParis, founded by DomGabriel Gifford O.S.B (ancestor of today'sDouai Abbey) as a daughter house ofSt Laurence Priory, Dieulouard dedicated toSt Edmund the Martyr King. In 1632 the Paris community settled on theRue Saint-Jacques, where KingJames II was later buried in the Chapel of St Edmund. The final community for monks was established in a disused collegiate church dedicated to St Adrian and St Denis,Lamspringe Abbey (ancestor ofFort Augustus Abbey), in Upper Saxony in what is now Germany.
The missionary work of the EBC monks among therecusant Catholics in England began to attract more women to the monastic life. Eight postulants travelled to Flanders with Dom Benet Jones, led byGertrude More, great-great granddaughter toSt Thomas More, and settling nearDouai. The community was established in 1623 at Cambrai and dedicated toOur Lady of Consolation (ancestor ofStanbrook Abbey). By 1645 the Cambrai community under AbbessCatherine Gascoigne had increased to 50 nuns, and was living in conditions of extreme poverty. On 6 February 1652, a new priory was established in Paris dedicated to Our Lady of Good Hope with Dame Bridget More as Prioress (ancestor ofColwich Abbey).[2]
The sexual abuse scandal in the EBC around the turn of the 21st century was a significant episode in a series ofCatholic sex abuse cases in the United Kingdom. The events concerned ranged from the 1960s to the 2010s, and led to a number of EBC monks beinglaicized, convicted and imprisoned for the sexual abuse of children and vulnerable adults.
Every four years the General Chapter of the EBC elects an Abbot or Abbess President from among the ruling and former ruling abbots and abbesses of the houses of the congregation. He or she is assisted by a number of officials, and periodically undertakes a Visitation of the individual houses. The purpose of the Visitation is the preservation, strengthening and renewal of the religious life, including the laws of the Church and the Constitutions of the congregation. The President may require by Acts of Visitation, that particular points in the Rule, the Constitutions and the law of the Church be observed.[8]
The current Abbot President is AbbotChristopher Jamison, former Abbot ofWorth Abbey.[9][10]
In 2020 the EBC had houses in the United Kingdom, the United States, Peru, and Zimbabwe. In 2022, three communities of nuns –Kylemore Abbey (Ireland),Mariavall Abbey (Sweden) andJamberoo Abbey (Australia) – were accepted into the EBC,[11] bringing the number of houses and communities to 17.
Membership Numbers
In 2022, membership of the constituent houses was as follows.[12]
| House | Bishops | Monks | Nuns | Novices |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Downside Abbey | 0 | 14 | 0 | 0 |
| Ampleforth Abbey | 0 | 45 | 0 | 0 |
| Douai Abbey | 0 | 21 | 0 | 0 |
| Stanbrook Abbey | 0 | 0 | 23 | 0 |
| Belmont Abbey | 1 | 27 | 0 | 4 |
| Curzon Park Abbey | 0 | 0 | 5 | 0 |
| Ealing Abbey | 0 | 9 | 0 | 0 |
| Buckfast Abbey | 0 | 8 | 0 | 0 |
| Saint Anselm's Abbey | 0 | 12 | 0 | 1 |
| Worth Abbey | 0 | 19 | 0 | 0 |
| Portsmouth Abbey | 0 | 12 | 0 | 0 |
| Saint Louis Abbey | 0 | 21 | 0 | 0 |
| Kylemore Abbey | 0 | 0 | 12 | 0 |
| Jamberoo Abbey | 0 | 0 | 22 | 0 |
| Mariavall Abbey | 0 | 0 | 12 | 0 |
| Total | 1 | 188 | 74 | 5 |
| Religious house in Europe | Location | Dates | Successor house in England |
|---|---|---|---|
| St Gregory's Priory, Douai | Douai, France | 1607–1798 | Downside Abbey |
| Dieulouard Priory | France | 1608–1798 | Ampleforth Abbey |
| St Malo Priory | St Malo,Brittany | c.1610 – late 17th century | n/a |
| St Edmund's Priory, Paris; later St Edmund's Abbey, Douai | Paris | 1615–1798 (Paris); 1818–1903 (Douai) | Douai Abbey, Woolhampton |
| Cambrai Priory | Cambrai,Flanders | 1625–1794 | Stanbrook Abbey |
| Our Lady of Good Hope Priory, Paris | Paris | 1651–1794 | Colwich Abbey |
| Lamspringe Abbey | Lamspringe, Lower Saxony | 1630–1803 | Broadway Priory, 1826–34;Fort Augustus Abbey, 1886–1998 |
England
Australia
Ireland
Peru
Sweden
United States
Zimbabwe
| Independent houses | |
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| Dependent houses | |
| Schools | |
| Former houses | |
| Churches | |
| International | |
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| National | |
| Other | |
